About the film:   Yaser and his partner Rima leave Syria to Lebanon, but after receiving the news that his younger brother passed away in Aleppo, they end up in a remote and an empty place in Turkey. In this place where the silence and the monotonous daily life being broken by the loud noise of the family calls whom still living in Aleppo. To spend a year and a half, which was almost like a slumber and a coma, waking up every day on the recurring nightmares echo.   This film has received the support of Bidayyat's documentary grant 2013  

  Ahmad is a Syrian child who doesn’t want to remember that he is Syrian. Half traumatized, half trying to escape his reality, he prefers to be silent and asleep. In his silence and refusal to talk, he takes us in a journey where individual and collective Syrian memories collapse.   Director: Soudade Kaadan    This film has received the support of Bidayyat’s documentary grant 2016.

  The film explores the subject of exile and the impact this has on the refugee in terms of the lack of options in his or her host culture, as told through the story of Mariam, a Syrian woman who has taken the decision to move out of central Beirut and onto the narrow sidewalk along the city’s Corniche. She makes her home there and takes the open sea as her lover and source of income, so she starts fishing and she finds in the sea, her salvation and inner peace.   The film also addresses the subject of migration by sea, the... more

  After two years of continuous frustrations, and the changing fortunes of the revolution and war in Kafranbel, civil activists are subjected to a fresh wave of persecution by their former friends. For extremist Islamist forces in the city their principles now provide a new reason to detain, execute, and torture them. Hassan, Ayman and Raed are activists from Kafranbel, the revolutionary Syrian town. “Why do we film ourselves now” is a documentary film that interweaves their media and journalistic projects and our outside view of the town’s current reality.       This film has received the support of Bidayyat’s documentary grant 2015

  Skin follows the director’s personal journey through vivid memories of two of her closest friends, Hussein and Soubhi, living in politically and socially tiring times. She documents their gradual collapse, which, as she realizes later, reflects her own inner collapse.   This film has received the support of Bidayyat’s documentary grant 2015

  Ibrahim is a secret member of the Palestinian Militant Organization “Revolutionary Council” (Abu Nidal), which was known for its notorious intelligence affairs. My Father, Ibrahim, disappeared in 1987,I was 5 years old, he said his mission will taken few days, but never returned home.   Growing up in a house where silence was the general atmosphere, my mother Najat, an Egyptian lady, had to continue her life normally and raise the five kids of Ibrahim in Damascus, only blaming her misfortune.   My film deals with the story behind the disappearance of my father Ibrahim Alabed, a door that was never opened in our family,... more

  Sarjeila, a village in Syria’s Idleb governorate, Sarjeila died when its inhabitants abandoned it 1,300 years ago, leaving to posterity their solid stone dwellings, an olive press, and graves. Then suddenly, life returned with the arrival of new residents who fled war and death, to live like ghosts in houses abandoned centuries before.   The film follows the lives of three families who came to the village to build new homes there, and records their relationship with the place and how the place itself is changing. It is a journal of people forced a thousand years back into the past, their lives destroyed... more

  The film, tells the story of a Syrian citizen who decides to risk becoming a photographer and cameraman in order to preserve and communicate the voice of the Syrian revolution in Aleppo. Over the course of four years the war turns him into a machine, stripped of his humanity, robotically churning out images of blood and tragedy, only for a traumatic experience to restore him to his senses. He films a group of twenty-two children during an exhibition of their paintings. Twenty-four hours later, their exhibition is bombed from the air and he returns to film their lifeless corpses.       This... more

  A year ago my head began to reject my hair, like those places in which I’ve lived, the countries that rejected me. Land after land, one place after another: Palestine, Syria, and now, Lebanon—those countries that have failed and have burdened me with their failure.   The Gulf War, the family’s constant sundering. Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Berlin: parts of myself scattered across all these places. My memory, riddled with holes. My present and my death.   In Umbilical Cord I assemble an archive of my family in Kuwait: my dead memory of family. I embark on a quest for the unknown part of... more

  Two women have given up on life; their words have stopped in their tracks. One exiles herself to silence; the other attempts to disappear in the company of four female poets who, before her, have attempted themselves to disappear in one way or another. A dialogue between one woman stuck in Damascus and another who had recently left the city. A dialogue between two worlds, internal and external—an impossible one.   This film has received the support of Bidayyat’s documentary grant 2015    

  "9½ -that's the age of Maha, a Syrian girl and the only survivor of her family. Left on her own, with a picture of her family all that is left, she embarks on a journey in her world made up of the visual experiences she accumulated and witnessed in the Syrian situation. During this journey, Maha makes unusual friends, with her imagination guiding her with sarcasm through this difficult world.       Director: Syrialism Duration: 07:34 min Year of production: 2015 Produced by: Bidayyat

DFI Film Financing supports Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) filmmakers all along the stages of the filmmaking process through grants and co-productions. Launched in May 2010, the Doha Film Institute’s film financing initiatives aim to support filmmakers in their storytelling, foster the exchange of knowledge, and enable filmmakers from the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries to fund and produce their own films. DFI supports Arab film projects of all kinds whether films for cinema or television. In addition, DFI will accept co-production proposals on a rotating basis for international projects. DFI has special grant and co-financing programmes as well as training workshops in... more